Book

Featuring 36 plants and almost 500 recipes, it is a cookbook dedicated to unusual botanical flavors. Its pages introduce cooks and farmers’ market shoppers to inspiring ingredients, and provide foragers with an arsenal of recipes for their seasonal bounty.

Many of the plants in Forage, Harvest, Feast can be foraged internationally (in cities, suburbs, and the rural wilds). Forgotten, neglected and unwanted plants often viewed as weeds are treated here as food, and occasionally as crops: amaranth, lamb’s quarters, white sweet clover, quickweed, purslane and cresses are given a place to shine. For plants like Japanese knotweed and burdock, that are very invasive, I advocate for mechanical control by the regular collection, consumption, and sale of their delicious edible parts in season. Some of the native American plants featured in Forage, Harvest, Feast can – and often should, for reasons of sustainability – be grown at home, in community gardens, or on diversified farms. Forage, Harvest, Feast provides readers with cultivation tips to help them develop their own kitchen gardens using native American flavors like bayberry, common milkweed, fiddleheads, spicebush, and sweetfern.

The recipes in Forage, Harvest, Feast range from pantry basics like mugwort salt and field garlic butter, to preserves like lacto-fermented garlic mustard, field garlic pickles, and fermented serviceberries, to infusions and hooches like seasonal vermouth and black cherry rum, right through dozens of appetizers, entrées, desserts, and bakes. With snacks and cocktails to start, of course. All recipes are indexed for vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians and omnivores.

Dedicated to the art of 21st century foraging, informed by an awareness of the importance of biodiversity, and celebrating native as well as invasive flavors, Forage, Harvest, Feast was created to inspire readers for years to come. Jump in!